Deep meaning in Traveling Through the Dark by William StaffordThe power of the poet is not only to convey an everyday scene in a literary portrait of words, but also to interweave this scene in a theme. The only tool the poet has is the word. Through careful placement and selection of words, the poet can hopefully express his point of view clearly, but not blatantly. Common themes in the poems are life, death, or the contradictory forces that oppose them. This theme could never be overused because of the endless and limitless ways to describe life or death through the use of different words. In William Stafford's "Traveling Through the Dark", there are contradictory themes between birth and death, man and nature, and ultimately creation and destruction. It would take several years for an adult doe to develop, but it would only take seconds for it to be killed. Using the poet's tools, Stafford vividly illustrates a scene in which man has completely destroyed and felt no remorse for a product of nature. This lack of respect would only lead the driver through the moral darkness of insensitivity and desecration towards nature. A dead doe in the middle of the road. The previous driver had clearly not thought twice after hitting the deer and had no sincerity towards nature nor the decency to at least move the carcass out of the narrow road. The deer were lying on the road, without burial, without care, without mourning and without supervision. Ironically, if the carcass had remained on the road, it could have meant the death of another driver, as Stafford states in line 4: “this road is narrow; a deviation could cause more deaths.” The tone of this poem is one of sadness, but also of blata...... middle of paper ......the shock of a car, lasting only a few seconds. With few moral decisions made, the only path that results is one of death and the ultimate degradation of society and nature. In Stafford's poem, it was only the narrator's duty to roll the carcass off the road and into the river, this duty accomplished only brought about by another's lack of duty. Through the use of several poetic techniques, Stafford describes in a few words, what would take hundreds of words to describe. The brutal and harsh theme of his poem is supported by vivid images and symbols that highlight the current situation. By applying a common situation like a road accident to all of humanity's view of nature, Stafford arrived at a simple situation with profound meaning. Work citedStafford, William. "Traveling in darkness"